The Great Graphics Card Crisis

After the New Year celebrations, 2018 has kicked off with some exciting new tech at CES, but the industry has also been met with some serious shortages, on the graphics card front. If you’ve been searching the market recently for a mid-range or high-end graphics card, you may well have noticed there’s hardly any floating about, some of the major distributors have described it as “like a desert” out there. Inevitably prices have seen a bit of a spike, going up by around 15%.

But where has all the stock gone you might ask?! Mining was the big buzzword of 2017, and it looks like 2018 has started off with plenty of miners keen to claim their stake in this modern gold rush. The controversial cryptocurrency market powered by blockchain technology is seen as a revolution in the world of money by some, or a decentralised anonymous form of payment for illicit goods and services by others. Whichever way you look at it, cryptocurrency is having a major knock-on effect on the graphics card market, as this currency can be acquired in exchange for processing power, creating a surge in demand for powerful graphics cards which are running at full capacity.

Here at DinoPC we are in the same boat as other UK resellers and system builders, we are fighting to gain valuable stock, working with most of the distributors and vendors and trying to minimize any prices rises that we pass on to customers. Naturally, prices have started rising due to the scarcity factor, compounded by increases in RAM prices. We will keep our ear to the ground and keep you updated as the situation materialises. With NVIDIA and AMD due to update their range at some point this year, we will see what bearing this has on the market, hopefully it will not cause further constraints!